Woolley Marketing: Best of breed or one throat to choke?

There was a time when a marketer appointed an agency. The agency. The Agency of Record (AoR). That was all that was needed. Then media agencies split off from their creative colleagues in pursuit of fame and fortune. Technology brought the rise of the interactive and then the digital specialist. Then social media specialists joined and so on and so forth, until marketers found themselves managing a veritable alphabet soup of agencies and specialists.

Out of frustration at managing and coordinating so many agency partners, many marketers found themselves pining for the old days of having ‘one throat to choke’. To be able to throw a brief to the agency and have them solve the challenge without dozens of meetings or worse, in-fighting, between the various agencies over budget and influence.

The belief that agency services consolidation would be the panacea for their clients’ issues has led many holding companies down this road. The approaches of Publicis One, Dentsu, WPP (who after the failure of Enfantico, found team success with Team America and Team Blue etc), and even little Havas and its village are based on the insight that marketers would prefer to work with fewer agencies, and ultimately one. Only Omnicom and IPG appear to be bucking this trend and continue to position the agency brands as best of breed in various categories of expertise.